


Stripes of Fate

by muggle95



Category: Magic Kaito
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Happy Ending, Identity Reveal, Injury, Light Angst, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, also some failed backstory romance, dcmk secret santa 2017, i know i should tag this properly but honestly it's 3am so i'll add more tags later, make sure you check the work notes for warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 13:11:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13167624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muggle95/pseuds/muggle95
Summary: Inspired by the soulmate au description:You have your soulmate’s hair colour on a stripe at your wrist, when they dye or change their hair colour the stripe changes to matchSaguru's soulmate changes their hair color far more often than anyone else's. But even once he's sure who his soulmate is, they won't acknowledge him in return. Is there any way for him to get his happy ending?





	1. England

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fiction_is_magic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiction_is_magic/gifts).



> Written for @starlightsigner for DCMK Secret Santa, who loves Hakuba as much as I do and asked for a HakuKai fic
> 
> If this weren't on a strict, Secret Santa deadline, it would be probably twice as long and would have taken me another year to be happy with (because I'd have actual scenes in the "manga recap" chapters instead of a paragraph or two) but alas, it was for secret santa and must be done today. I'm actually still pretty happy with it.
> 
> ...clearly I have no idea how to write short fics, because it's still over 10k words long, but hey. Nobody's perfect.
> 
> Sorry it's late, but I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Many many thanks to [Mint](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mintchocolateleaves) who helped me make Hakuba and his backstory sound British instead of American. I think I got all the slang and school levels fixed up, but I definitely haven't changed any gray/grey or favor/favour spellings. Any remaining american-isms or other mistakes are my fault.  
> Also thanks to @fugaliciousfella for helping me figure out the title
> 
> Warnings:  
> \- racist remarks, briefly, in the first chapter because kids are assholes  
> \- Implied dubcon  
> \- Saguru has a very unhealthy backstory relationship, so relevant warnings for that I guess (again, mainly just implied because of the flashback nature of the first few chapters)  
> \- character injury, nothing permanent or deadly

Saguru had long suspected his soulmate was Japanese, by the brown-nearly-black stripe on the inside of his left wrist. That wasn’t too surprising; his father still lived in Japan, and his mother made sure they both visited at least once a year. But Saguru was in no rush to find and meet his soulmate. As a child, he was more interested in his studies and in becoming a great detective, just like Holmes. If soulmates really were destined for each other, Saguru was sure he would meet his match eventually, at the right time, so there was no need to rush to Japan to meet them. And besides, girls had cooties.

 ~~~

When Saguru was 12, he started wearing a large watch, the band big enough to hide his soulmark. If people asked, it was because he didn’t care all that much about his soulmark and he was tired of classmates’ teasing questions about what sort of foreigner has hair quite that color – his soulmate must be so _exotic_ (ugh, what a useless word, “exotic”). It wasn’t entirely a lie. He could still feel the slight psychic warmth of it every time his stripe changed colors, but it was distracting to watch how quickly it would fade from deep brown to bleached-yellow to some bright color – blue or orange or hot pink – and usually around lunchtime. Better to keep it covered to avoid distracting himself and others.

The first time Saguru’s mark had changed color, he’d nearly panicked: most Japanese schools were rather strict about “unnatural” hair colors (which he knew because his father warned about the punishment Saguru might face for his naturally-lighter hair every time the topic came up that Saguru might one day study in Japan) so did that mean his soulmate was years older, old enough for uni when Saguru was barely old enough for secondary school? But by the time he’d gotten home from school, intending to ask Baaya or his mother about the change, the stripe was back to normal, perhaps dyed back to an “acceptable” color for school the following day.

He kept his discovery to himself, but started studying even harder. He wasn’t quite sure of the chemistry of hair and bleach and dyes, but the color changes seemed improbably fast. He didn’t think the color change was from a spray-on hair color that washed out immediately, since his soulmate was apparently bleaching their hair first. But did bleach really work that fast? Did dye actually set that fast? The entire change seemed to happen in minutes. He thought bleach took an hour or two to work, especially on darker hair. Now that he was sure his soul mark was indeed changing colors and wasn’t just an unnaturally-dark birthmark, he was itching to experiment. What would happen to his soulmate’s mark if he dyed just one lock of his own hair? Would it stay the color of the majority of Saguru’s hair? Would it get a small stripe? Would the position of the stripe be affected by where on his head he’d dyed the hair? What would happen to his soulmate’s hair if he drew over his soul mark? An experiment was useless without being able to see the results though. Even though he still wasn’t particularly interested in romance, he found himself interested in what his soulmate might look like. Why she was dying her hair so often. What his own hair color looked like against her wrist. It was all just scientific curiosity, of course. Why would it be anything else?

Saguru pretended he wasn’t disappointed when, the week before he turned 14, his soul mark faded from a shiny black back to its original dark brown, and _stayed_ that way. He got a Sherlock Holmes-inspired pocket watch as a birthday present, and made a habit of checking that for the time instead of his wrist watch. It somehow felt too disappointing to look at his wrist for anything, with his soul mark no longer changing every couple of days. He didn’t quit wearing the wrist watch.

Age 14 was also the year Saguru started realizing how attractive fellow human beings could be. He started being jealous of Mary and Ben – a couple who had found each other as soulmates the first week of secondary school and had been dating ever since. He kissed a girl, Becca, in the science classroom after school one day, after they’d stayed late to finish a chemistry lab write-up. She had beautiful red hair, and a medium brown stripe on her wrist, darker than Saguru’s hair but lighter than his own mark. They verbally agreed that their kissing was only practice so they would be good at it before they met their soulmates. Regardless, they kissed eight more times that term, all under similar circumstances and with similar words. Saguru found himself regretting his certainty that his soulmate was Japanese, and that he wouldn’t find her – or him – at school in England.

After Christmas break, Becca started dating Matt. Saguru tried to pretend he didn’t mind, and deliberately didn’t comment on how Matt’s hair was a shade lighter brown than Becca’s mark. His own hair didn’t match at all, and he’d always agreed that they weren’t dating. He had no claim to her.

Instead, two months later, he let himself be wooed by Daniel, a tall, lanky guy with blond hair. Daniel was a local college student who volunteered at the same community garden that Saguru did. Daniel insisted that soul marks were bullshit. “Why would I want to wait on someone that ‘fate’ or whatever ‘prepared for me’ when I can just love the people around me now?” Daniel mused to Saguru one afternoon as they sat in the grass behind Daniel’s house. Daniel took off his wire-frame glasses to rub at his eyes and Saguru grinned in return, trying to let the glib apathy toward soul marks sink into his heart. Why _should_ soul marks matter? He let himself be drawn in for a kiss, trying not to wonder what color Danny’s soul mark was under the sweat band he always wore. It didn’t matter, right? Neither of them cared about soul marks anyway.

Their romance wasn’t quite a whirlwind, but it was intense, and involved Daniel encouraging Saguru to do some things he really wasn’t sure about. Saguru’s mother was gone on business so frequently that most Thursday nights, Baaya’s regular evening off, Danny stayed over, and always wanted more from Saguru. But it was fine, right? He’d be interested in doing those things _eventually_ and in the meantime, Danny was enjoying himself, so Saguru figured he was doing something right. He still enjoyed the kissing, and the cuddling in Saguru’s bed. They never got to cuddling until after Danny was bored of everything else, sure, but when Saguru was lying in bed, back to back with Danny’s comforting warmth, their ankles gently entwined, it was the most secure he’d ever felt. This was love, wasn’t it? What else would it be?

***

The end came abruptly the summer before Saguru turned 16. Daniel tried to convince Saguru that it was because Saguru had deluded him about his own lack of interest in soul marks, and was “emotionally cheating on him” with his supposed future soulmate. With freshly jaded eyes, Saguru thought it had more to do with how Daniel – no longer Danny, nothing affectionate left for that bastard – had been accepted to a university two hours away, so he now had a different crowd of people to corrupt.

Still, Daniel’s accusation stuck with him. _Was_ Saguru more interested in his soulmate than in Daniel? Now, after their breakup, literally everyone in the world was more appealing than _him_ , but before? Saguru’s soul mark had been prickling again somewhat predictably for the past few months. He thought he’d been subtle about checking it, but maybe he hadn’t. What if he really had been paying more attention to his hypothetical soulmate that he’d never met than he was to Danny? That wasn’t possible, was it? He’d only ever payed attention to the prickle in his soul mark for brief moments when they’d been together. He spent at least as much attention on his homework, if not more.

Saguru’s soul mate, for their part, wasn’t doing much to their hair this year: they seemed to be sticking to within the normal variation of Japanese hair colors. Every couple of days, or at least once a week, he would feel the warmth on his wrist in early afternoon as the color changed from its usual rich brown to a slightly yellower or redder or darker brown, occasionally to a salt-and-pepper, or powdery gray pattern. It was always back to normal before Saguru went to bed though. Several things were strange about that: mid-afternoon in London was late evening in Japan. What was his soulmate doing that late at night that they were changing their hair color so often, and changing it back within a few hours each time?

It wasn’t romantic interest. It couldn’t be, they’d never met. It was just curiosity. As far as he knew, most people didn’t go around changing their hair color every couple of days. His mother dyed the gray out of her hair once a month or so, and he’d seen her slowly-graying soul mark on occasion, demonstrating that his father didn’t do anything to reverse the gray in his own hair. As far as Saguru could tell, it wasn’t common at all to have a soul mark change so frequently, at least when neither soulmate was in their early twenties, since it was tradition for young adults to dye their hair a new color every couple of days until they found their soulmate. Instinct told him that he ought to keep it secret, so it was a mystery he had to puzzle out alone. Kind of like the mysteries he occasionally helped the London police solve, except _those_ he only solved alone because no one else was asking the right questions, rather than by necessity.

 ~~~

When Saguru first heard his father lamenting to his mother about the ineptitude of Division Two officers, he didn’t think much of it. Okay so there was a jewel thief continuing to cause them problems. Surely the police would catch the thief soon enough, no matter how good they were. The police had a numerical advantage, and plenty of smart people. They’d outwit the thief eventually.

 ~~~

A month or so later, as Saguru caught wind of more and more of the stories, he was starting to understand his father’s bafflement and exasperation at the police. The thief, International Criminal 1412, who was for some reason nicknamed Kid, could impersonate anyone’s appearance and voice flawlessly (Saguru doubted it was that well, but that’s how the stories went). He had tricked everyone into believing that he’d stolen the hands off a giant clock tower, while instead leaving a cipher puzzle on the face, preventing the tower from being sold while the “evidence” was decrypted. There had supposedly been jewels in the hands, but Kid hadn’t moved them, and further inspection determined those jewels had been fakes. The cipher only said something about not allowing people to demolish the tower.

Something about the story of Kid sat wrong with Saguru, so he added a “research Kid” section to his evening homework routine. It was obvious even to himself that he was grasping at straws to fill the time he’d formerly spent with Danny, but it was interesting enough to read about Kid’s exploits, and the variety of things he’d stolen or tried to steal, and his unusual habit of announcing heists before enacting them, giving the police more time to prepare. One would think that the police should have even more of an advantage than Saguru’s previous estimates would suggest, but clearly it wasn’t enough against Kid.

Among his notes, Saguru made a timeline of Kid’s heists. He was as baffled as anyone else about the unexpected, unexplained eight-year gap, and would have suspected, like many others had at the time, that Kid had died then. He very carefully did not consider how the heists had started up again around the time his soulmark had resumed changing. Everything was a blur, with Danny around, and Saguru hadn’t made a note of the date he first noticed it, not when he had been trying so hard to ignore everything to do with soul marks. If he was right, though, Kid reappeared a few days before his soul mark had started changing again, so it was probably a coincidence. It wasn’t the same time. Especially since Kid had been pulling heists for years before now. He would be significantly older than Saguru, and there’s no reason fate would have decided to pair Saguru with someone his mother’s age or older. It had to be just coincidence. Still, Kid was a good distraction from everything else, so Saguru continued to throw himself into researching the thief.

A week after Saguru had hurriedly dismissed the hypothesis that Kid was his soulmate, his soulmate changed their hair color again, to a just-barely-lighter, glossier shade than their usual brown, in the early afternoon, and back to its usual shade when he was just laying down in bed. He wasn’t quite surprised the next morning after he’d come down for breakfast when his mother got off the phone with his father and shook her head fondly at Saguru. “That thief is at it again. Your father just keeps getting busier, I swear.” Still, it had to be a coincidence. One time meant nothing.

Three heists later, and Saguru knew he was lying to himself when he insisted the events were unrelated. He still didn’t tell anyone, and he kept wearing his wristwatch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *** there's a scene that I wrote but chose to leave out that fits here. It breaks from the flashback style and makes some of Danny's manipulative nature more obvious. It would also force me to tag the entire work as noncon and explicit, and for what was very little plot payoff. If for some reason there's a huge clamor for that scene to be included, I might be convinced to add it back, but I assume no one's that upset about me leaving it out.


	2. Kid

Saguru’s tipping point came in mid-January, when his maths teacher was out one day, ill, and the sub was a tall skinny man with blond hair.

He wasn’t Daniel. His voice and manner and face were all entirely different, and he didn’t wear glasses at all. That didn’t prevent the ice racing down Saguru’s spine in panic when he walked into the classroom, nor did it stop the urge to cry or to punch something that had him nearly vibrating with tension for the rest of the day until he got home.

Before doing his homework that night, Saguru drafted a carefully-worded email to his father, asking if he could transfer to a Japanese school and work with Division Two as “career practice”, to learn by experience how the police dealt with a particularly elusive repeat-criminal. He alluded to his own crime-stopping in London and promised to be attentive and respectful, and to obey the orders of whoever was in charge. To his surprise, his father agreed after he’d asked only once, and agreed that he could transfer as soon as the details could be worked out. It was mid-term in both Japanese and British schools. Saguru was confused but thrilled with the immediacy of his father’s agreement.

~~~ 

“As soon as the details could be worked out” turned out to be making arrangements for Saguru to finish at London Bridge High School in the second week of February, shortly before Valentine’s day, and to start at Ekoda High two weeks later, after he’d had time to pack up and move to his father’s house. Saguru’s parents agreed that Baaya would move with him, since his father worked long hours and one of her main tasks as their housekeeper had been to make sure Saguru had everything he needed for lunches and school projects. Saguru appreciated the coincidence that meant he wouldn’t have to spend Valentine’s Day with romance-obsessed teens at either school.

Saguru spent one week packing up his clothes and some of his books, and a few other things he thought he might need, then he and Baaya flew to Japan with another week before he would be starting school. The week of down time gave him a chance to recover from jet lag, and in fact, the afternoon his plane landed in Tokyo, Division Two received a notice that Kid would be stealing something from an art gallery the evening before Saguru was due to start school. Saguru’s father texted him to ask if he was interested in attending a heist so early. He replied that of course he was, and asked for further details, which his father promised to provide later, and to arrange for Saguru to be allowed on site.

Saguru hadn’t even hesitated with his answer: Kid was his primary reason for coming to Japan, and although Saguru had been starting his final term of year 12 in England, he was being put into the Japanese equivalent of a year 11 class for the last two months of the Japanese school year. He thought that was unnecessary, since he was already diligent about studying and had always been in the top ten percent of his class, but it meant he didn’t have to worry as much about classes, or about tiring himself out before the first day, since he was sure he’d be more than capable of catching up.

Saguru thought briefly about what to wear, but decided easily on the same Holmes cosplay he’d taken to wearing when solving crimes in London. He didn’t have any Japanese formalwear that would make the officers take him more seriously as a teenager, and even in Japan, people were familiar enough with Holmes to immediately connect “deerstalker hat and magnifying glass” and “brilliant detective”, consciously and subconsciously, so they’d listen to him a little more even if they thought that him dressing up like someone he admired was juvenile. Plus, in an outfit like that, no one who’d been told he belonged could “mistake” him for an ordinary teen who ought to be removed from the heist location.

At his father’s advice, Saguru switched out his oversized pocket watch for a skin-tone spandex sleeve that was customary in Japan. Things like soulmates were treated more privately here, and Saguru really couldn’t complain, given his own complicated feelings about soul marks, and considering his barely-repressed suspicion that Kid was his soulmate. He considered wearing his wrist watch over the sleeve, but decided against it. He was used to checking his pocket watch for the time, and the spandex was already bothering him if he paid too much attention to it, the slight, distributed pressure unfamiliar when he was used to the looser weight of his watch. Combining them, he suspected, would annoy him more.

His father easily talked Inspector Nakamori into letting Saguru work with Division Two to catch Kid, but once he was out of the room, Saguru could see that Nakamori was prepared to condescend to him. “If there’s anything you don’t get, just ask,” Nakamori offered, so Saguru took his chance.

“Is The Kid male or female?” he asked first, a simple question that surely people who had faced off with the thief would have determined by now.

“Well, male I guess,” Nakamori answered, and Saguru carefully did not raise a skeptical eyebrow at how the expert, who had been chasing Kid for years, wasn’t even confident on his target’s gender.

Besides, that sort of uncertaintly meant that Saguru was more likely to get away with his investigation-intimidation tactic. He fired off nine or ten rapid-fire questions about Kid’s looks, personality, and preferences. They were all ostensibly profiling questions, which could be used to predict Kid’s motivations and therefore his future actions. Although, Saguru realized in the sudden silence following his questions, if anyone knew about his suspicions about his soulmate, [they might suspect each question to be inspired by romantic curiosity rather than professional.](http://www3.mangafreak.net/Read1_Magic_Kaito_15_12) He wasn’t surprised when Nakamori was left speechless in the face of all his questions, and he didn’t actually mind. The point was to demonstrate that Saguru had thought seriously about profiling the criminal and ought to be respected and taken seriously, rather than about getting answers right now.

Asking about his favorite baseball team wasn’t even particularly off topic, considering Kid had once sent in a notice about stealing a home run baseball from a batter with a terrible record, although according to Nakamori’s own report a child had left with the ball instead; Kid hadn’t quite succeeded in stealing it.

With Nakamori’s reluctant blessing, Saguru started walking around the museum, to see if he could find any clues to predict Kid’s plan. After he completed a lap inside, he stepped out the front doors to look at the surroundings. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find in the blowing snow, but it never hurt to get a more thorough picture of his surroundings, especially while he was relatively unfamiliar with the area.

On the front steps, Saguru found a police ID badge. He picked it up in gloved hands, frowning, and flipped it open. The badge included the picture of an officer, Nishimura Hayato. Nishimura had glossier blue-black hair than the stripe on Saguru’s arm, if the color in the picture was true to life. All that meant, though, was that if Kid was Saguru’s soulmate and if he was disguised tonight, he hadn’t disguised himself using Nishimura’s face. Saguru had been overly aware of his wrist tonight, with the spandex sleeve gently squeezing it, and he hadn’t felt the usual warmth that indicated his soulmate’s hair color changing.

He tucked the badge into a pocket of his coat. He didn’t have an evidence bag handy, and he wasn’t even sure it _was_ evidence, but he didn’t want anyone to step on the badge and have it slip over the snow and cause them to fall if the usual chase took them outside. He looked up again, and saw a police car off to the side, with windows fogged up, preventing sight in or out. He stepped forward to investigate. Windows fogged like that implied that someone was sitting inside the car – and in fact the engine was quietly idling, reinforcing that hypothesis – but with the windows fogged like that, it wasn’t particularly useful for someone to be sitting there watching for Kid if they couldn’t see clearly.

Fortunately, when Saguru stepped up to the vehicle, and put his face close against the glass, it wasn’t so foggy that he couldn’t see through the window. There was someone tied up in the back seat, wearing an undershirt and underwear, with a similar hairstyle to Nishimura’s in the badge Saguru had picked up. It seemed that Kid had stolen Nishimura’s police uniform but wasn’t impersonating him, if he had left the badge behind. Saguru squinted at the control panel in front, and saw that the heat was turned all the way up in the car. Kid had a heart – at least he wasn’t leaving Nishimura to freeze.

Saguru turned back to the building, examining it from the outside. There was nothing more he could do for Nishimura right now, especially since opening the car door would let the winter chill in and calling for medical attention for the bump on Nishimura’s head would distract from the heist that was starting in only a few minutes. He would be warm and safe until after the heist.

There was a banner high on the building announcing the exhibit Kid was targeting, and a balloon higher, with a similar banner. The balloon was surprisingly sturdy, not being blown around as much as he would expect the usual advertisement balloons to do in this wind. Was it bigger? He squinted up at it, then followed the line of the tether to the ground less than two meters from him. There was no reason the museum should need duplicate advertisements, especially when one seemed to be a helium blimp capable of carrying a human and some cargo away. On a hunch, he cut the tether before going back inside, giving the blimp just enough of a glance to ensure it was floating away. It was not, so he squinted up at it until he saw the second tether connecting the balloon right outside an upper story window. He made his way up to the balcony, cut the rope, and watched the balloon start to rise out of reach before taking his place in the crowd of officers watching the painting Adam’s Smile, waiting for Kid to strike. It was almost time.

Saguru frowned when his pocket watch said 10:01. He was starting to question his certainty that Kid was already in the building, disguised as an officer. But on the other hand, most people kept less precise time than Saguru did. He would revise his suspicions if nothing had happened in the next five minutes.

Before the clock struck 10:02, Kid finally struck, producing a burst of white smoke that obscured the painting. When it cleared, mere seconds later, the frame was still on the wall, with a note from Kid saying he’d already stolen the painting. Saguru ran the moment through his head again. There was no place to have hidden while removing the painting, and there definitely hadn’t been time for Kid to have safely removed the painting from its frame and put the frame back on the wall.

Saguru sighed quietly to himself as every officer in the room took the bait and rushed out of the exhibition hall to find Kid. Every officer, that was, except one of the three who had been caught in the smoke. That officer was seemingly in the middle of a coughing fit and not moving from in front of the painting. Saguru stepped quietly up behind him, not at all surprised when the “officer” (with hair a very familiar shade of brown which Saguru was _ignoring_ thank you very much) took the frame off the wall, let out a very un-professional chuckle, and started peeling Kid’s note off the actual Adam’s Smile underneath.

Saguru didn’t let Kid think he’d won, immediately identifying and criticizing the trick Kid had used. He couldn’t stop himself from scolding the thief for being over a minute late.

Kid, unsurprisingly, was not so easily caught. He taunted Saguru in return, refused to answer Saguru’s question about why he stole, and went out the window anyway with a hang glider despite the heavy winds.

Saguru watched out the window as the wind caught Kid and threw him downward in a certain direction, before walking quickly outside to follow. It seemed Kid had crash-landed right in front of a group of officers who were pursuing him already. Saguru watched as they chased Kid onto an ice rink, and caught up to the edge of the rink right as Nakamori and a few other officers dogpiled on one apparent Kid, while the other, clumsier version, reached the far end of the ice rink and disappeared into the blowing snow. He took an amused note in his notebook when Nakamori howled in protest about having caught a dummy instead of Kid. “Kid… cannot… ice skate,” he muttered as he wrote. That was an interesting detail. He wasn’t sure it would help yet, since the police never chose the heist locations, so they couldn’t arrange to have a heist in a location that everyone had to skate into, but in the long run, he expected that every little detail would help in catching Kid.

…for some definition of ‘catching’.


	3. Manga Recap 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I hadn't had to release this fic on a deadline, I would have entirely rewritten some canon scenes. Failing that, this chapter is here to remind you of the relevant parts of canon that future chapters rely upon

Saguru’s first day at school and the corresponding introspection goes almost the same as it does in canon. Also Kaito reacts badly enough to Saguru suggesting that he’s Kid that Saguru doesn’t bring up that he also thinks they’re soulmates.

Likewise with the time Saguru collects a hair that Kid has left behind during a heist and does the genetic analysis on it and concludes that Kaito is the primary suspect. The additional scene I would have added is that Saguru holds up the hair to his arm before feeding it into the machine to get analyzed, and it matches exactly. Were it not for the slight shadow the hair casts on Saguru’s arm, it would blend in perfectly to his soul mark. Saguru has mixed feelings about this.


	4. St Patrick's Day

Saguru hadn’t even spent a month in this class, yet he had become entirely too accustomed to Kuroba Kaito, he mused, watching unperturbed as Nakamori chased Kuroba around before classes started. She was yelling, and he was jumping on every other desk to keep away, leaping over his classmates’ heads. A few flinched at the motion (and at Nakamori’s mop close behind) but otherwise people hardly reacted. It was just a normal morning for their antics. As Saguru thought this, Kuroba pivoted, ran three desks laterally to Saguru’s desk, and then hopped to the floor while Nakamori struggled to change her momentum. Kuroba pulled something over Saguru’s head as he landed, and Saguru lost track of Kuroba for a moment as his peripheral vision was cut off. Fortunately, whatever was now on his face had eye holes, so Saguru blinked rapidly, trying to gauge where Kuroba had gone by the angle the pressure of Kuroba’s hands had faded away (back and at an upwards angle, as though ruffling his hair, though the sensation of fingers in hair was missing), and to otherwise regain his sense of the scene.

Before he could quite get his bearings, suddenly Nakamori was in his face, shouting, “Ba-Kaito!” Saguru flinched back as she readied her mop for a swing. Fortunately, she hesitated, then turned and chased Kuroba up the aisle of desks, still shouting. “Aoko isn’t falling for your tricks, BaKaito!” When she was out of range and the adrenaline high was starting to wear off, Saguru’s brain finally caught up with deducing everything. Kuroba must have pulled a mask onto his head, to distract Nakamori. By how his hair felt squished-down, it must be a full skull cap, complete with wig. Saguru gently peeled the mask up off his face, observing by texture that it was probably latex. He wondered idly if anyone in the school was allergic to latex*, and if Kuroba took that into consideration when choosing to bring it to school.

As Saguru finally peeled the mask entirely off his face, the mask snapped into a more relaxed shape, and he found himself covered in a shower of fine powder. He quickly brushed off his face before anything could land in his eyes. He set the mask on his desk and swiped up a fingerful of the powder to examine, and rubbed his thumb across the powder on his finger, holding them under his nose. By scent and texture, it seemed to be baking soda. Saguru frowned at it for a moment, trying to figure out the significance of it. He ignored a classmate’s muffled giggle and examined the mask more closely. It was already rolled up, nearly to the top, but he turned it fully inside out, observing where the thin remnant of baking soda coating vanished (above the eye holes), and with a sinking feeling, where there were dark green and bright orange patches that looked like nearly-dry liquid. Like hair dye. Saguru tentatively touched his powdered finger to the green patch and watched it fizz into airy green bubbles that fell easily off his finger without staining. He tapped a clean finger into the dye and tried to rub it off. His thumb fizzed and also came out clean. His fingertip was clearly stained green by the time it was dry. The dye didn’t smell like vinegar, so it probably had powdered citric acid or another mildly acidic component mixed in to cause the dye to set faster – that was common among dyes. Saguru had never thought to coat things with a base to prevent dye from setting on those places**, but evidently Kuroba had.

At that moment, Ikeda-sensei entered the room. “Hakuba-kun,” she scolded, “You really cannot –“

“It was Kuroba-kun,” Momoi interrupted. “Hakuba-kun came in with un-dyed hair today.”

Ikeda-sensei just sighed, also too-used to Kuroba’s antics. “And where is Kuroba-kun now,” she asked tiredly, addressing Momoi.

“Aoko lost Kaito-kun,” Nakamori answered, re-entering the room calmly and stashing the mop back into the supply closet before sitting down at her desk. “But Aoko is sure he’ll be back by the time class starts.”

Kuroba did in fact reappear right before class started. By all appearances, he seemed to be very interested in the lecture, not glancing sideways at his results on Saguru’s hair at all, and not pranking anyone else. Saguru couldn’t help but watch Kuroba out of the corner of his eye. He hadn’t exactly been subtle about his suspicion that Kuroba was Kid. Now he was considering that if Kid really was his soulmate, and if Kuroba was Kid, Kuroba had probably figured out that they were soulmates. He wondered how Kuroba was taking it.

Kuroba didn’t say anything. In fact, he barely acknowledged Hakuba for the rest of the day, which was, unfortunately, well within his normal variation, which made it hard to draw conclusions.

During their lunch break, Nakamori asked Kuroba why he’d dyed Saguru’s hair orange and green. “There’s a British holiday today, isn’t there?” Kuroba answered with a nonchalant shrug and his usual wicked grin. “I just wanted to make Hakuba-kun feel at home.”

It was March 17th… Saint Patrick’s day? Saguru had forgotten about it, since it wasn’t celebrated all that widely in England, and especially since he’d been more distracted wondering if he owed anyone chocolate for White Day earlier that week, considering he hadn’t been around to receive chocolate on Valentine’s Day.

“I’m not Irish you know,” Saguru said as mildly as he could manage. He didn’t even let any of his irritation at having his hair dyed unexpectedly into the sentence. Saguru dug into his bento and watched Kuroba out of the corner of his eye, and finally, for half a second, a flash of bafflement crossed Kuroba’s face before he masked it with a practiced grin. Success. Saguru allowed himself a self-satisfied smirk as Kuroba proceeded to rile up Nakamori again. It seemed it _was_ possible to prank Kuroba back on occasion, if only by failing to respond. Now if only he could get his hair back to normal as easily, the day would have been truly a success.

Nakamori stopped Saguru before he could leave the classroom at the end of the day. “You should wash your hair with cold water if you want BaKaito’s dyes to come out easily,” she advised.

Nakamori’s advice turned out to be good: Saguru’s hair was still slightly stained after he washed it, but the orange left his blond hair only slightly darker than his natural color, and what remained of the green could be mistaken for shadow at a glance. Neither color was bright or obviously unnatural except the line down the center of his head made it clear that at least one was not his natural hair color.

Of course, when he got to school again that didn’t matter. Ikeda-sensei only sighed when Kuroba covered Nakamori from the waist up in smoke, shortly after class started. When the smoke cleared, Nakamori’s hair was a deep blue, befitting her name. Lacking any retribution besides Nakamori’s rush for her mop, Kuroba continued gleefully dying everyone else’s hair but his own, fortunately in solid colors this time. By lunch, the room was a rainbow of different hair colors and no two people had quite the same shade. Today, Saguru’s hair was highlighter yellow. He didn’t think that should be possible without spending an hour or two bleaching it first, but Kuroba apparently had his ways because he had made it happen in about 17 seconds’ worth of visually-obscuring smoke.

Saguru noticed with some amusement that he was the fourteenth of 27 classmates (28 counting Kuroba himself) to have his hair dyed. Kuroba was probably trying not to single him out by dying his hair first or last, but dead-center was its own sort of giveaway. He grinned, noticing how Kuroba’s gaze would scan the room and inevitably skip too-quickly over whichever section Saguru was in. Kuroba was trying too hard not to look, Saguru assumed. He used that to his advantage though, it gave him the ability to watch Kuroba with less fear of getting teased or pranked for his attention.

Kuroba was clever with his hands, had the softest lips Saguru had ever seen, and tried too hard to mask what he was thinking to the point that Saguru was learning how to read him by the gaps and stutters in his body language. There were worse people Saguru could think of to be his soulmate, even if Kuroba was kind of a pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *actually I headcanon that Kaito uses nitrile because latex allergies exist, but Saguru has no reason to know that yet, the materials are similar, and latex is better known
> 
> **It's true that vinegar or powdered citric acid, or another mild acid is commonly added to dyes to make them set faster. I have no idea if it's true that a base would prevent them from setting. don't believe all the science you read in fanfiction. (but if you test whether baking soda affects dyes setting, please let me know your results, I'm curious)


	5. Manga Recap 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I'm out of time for Secret Santa, and this is really similar to canon. If this weren't on a deadline, there might be 3-6 chapters in this gap to revisit canon interactions but with more introspection.

Saguru and Kaito drift from rival-friends to friend-rivals in canon. In this universe, they both are tentatively open to being soulmates, but Kaito doesn’t want to admit it for obvious reasons (he knows Saguru can easily guess that Kid is his soulmate and doesn’t want it used against him), and Saguru doesn’t want to push his luck as Kaito gets less forceful about denying being Kid. They’re both worried that if they confess or bring up being soulmates, the other will default more to the rivalry side of their friendship-rivalry and use it against them. So they dance around the soulmate issue the same way they dance around the “Kaito is Kid” issue, except with even less acknowledgement. But they're both always aware of it in the same way.


	6. Heist

For once, jet lag was working in Saguru’s favor. He’d been back in England for a month, but the day he flew back to Japan, preparing for another school term, there turned out to be a heist that night, announced earlier that day. Kid had promised to steal a large, nameless emerald “at the end of moonrise” which should be approximately 11:13pm The late-evening heist was matching up with his internal clock’s “early afternoon” so despite the inevitable fatigue following a plane journey in close quarters with too many strangers, he was wide awake and on top of his game for chasing Kid, at least as much as anyone ever could be.

Maybe that was the reason he noticed movement in the other building. He was scanning the area, looking for hints of Kid’s escape plans or other trick setups. And while the heist was stealing a jewel from a museum that only had three floors, and was open late, 10:24pm was much later than anyone should have been in the office building across the street, especially passing repeatedly back and forth in front of the windows. He might have understood if a workaholic was busy at their computer this late, but something about the whole situation sat wrong with him.

Saguru didn’t think to tell anyone before he walked out of the museum’s side door and across the street to investigate the office building. He might have remembered to inform a police officer if he had been faced with entering a locked building on his own, but instead, he found an emergency exit door, with the lock clearly picked, propped open with a shoe-sized stone. He let himself quietly inside and found his way to the fifth floor where he thought he’d seen movement through the windows.

Saguru was creeping down the hallway, which was lit only by moonlight coming in from the east windows and spilling through offices into the hallway, when he started hearing voices. He focused on taking silent steps forward until he could understand what they were saying.

“ – and does Snake really need to keep harassing this guy? Over a fucking myth?” said one voice. Male, probably a chain-smoker, Saguru easily deduced. Saguru froze, both so he could more easily listen, and because he realized that the voices were coming from an office across the hall from him and only a little bit ahead, and if the people in it turned around they could see him. If he made any noise, they would probably turn. The first voice was coming from a figure wearing all black, and arranging a rifle on a stand, with the end pointing out a window that was barely cracked open.

“Hey, money is money,” another figure chided (taller, skinnier, also in black, doing something similar with another rifle). “Does it matter _why_ we’re paid to shoot someone? Besides, even if we shoot him and the Kid survives and gets caught? The police will be too tied up in prosecuting him to mess with our operations.”

Saguru must have made a noise of surprise, of horror. These people were here to kill Kid. His _soulmate_. Kid was a criminal, yes, and he probably deserved punishment for his crimes, (Saguru wasn’t sure what charges would stick, considering Kid always returned the things he stole) but nothing he had done had earned the death sentence, and Kid definitely did not deserve a death sentence to be carried out by two people who were likely also criminals, judging by their highly illegal guns.

Saguru was regretting not having started a voice recording app on his phone when the first figure spun away from the window. “There’s someone here!” he said, looking straight at Saguru. Saguru also belatedly realized that no one knew he was here.

Saguru’s brain finally switched from “freeze” to “flee” as the first criminal approached him, holding a handgun. He turned to run back down the hallway. “Don’t shoot!” called the second criminal. “We don’t want attention here until we’re ready to leave, and that’s _after_ we’ve killed the Kid.”

Before Saguru could take more than a step, the first criminal had caught up to him. The criminal hit Saguru over the head with his handgun, and Saguru collapsed. He fought to keep consciousness, and succeeded long enough to realize the criminals had started arguing about what to do with him, but their words were far away, and seemed like gibberish as the world faded away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah, a cliffhanger. Aren't you glad I'm posting the next chapter in less than a minute?


	7. Safe House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should this have been two chapters? Maybe by length. But there was no thematic place to split it so have a super long conclusion chapter

The headache woke him. Saguru almost didn’t open his eyes, squeezing them tightly shut against the pale morning light. But that minute motion seemed to trigger a rustling noise next to him, like someone sitting up straighter. Why would someone be in his bedroom? He didn’t think he’d been ill recently.

With that thought, the events of the night before were starting to return. He’d left a heist to investigate shadowy figures in the building next door, and one of them had bashed him over the head when they caught him snooping. That was a clear memory. He also had a fuzzy memory of Kid standing over the same black-clad snipers, by then tied up, and an unexpected pressure on his face as Kid’s typical pink sleeping gas filled the room. A gas mask probably, since he seemed to remember watching the snipers lose consciousness, and he ought to have been more susceptible to sleeping gas in his injured state. Saguru realized with a growing sense of dread that he had no memory of even leaving that building the night before, let alone going home. Now that he focused on it, the pillow seemed slightly firmer than his own, but the room lacked the ambient smells and sounds of a hospital. So whose bed was he in?

Saguru slowly opened his eyes. Sure enough, he was in an unfamiliar room with undecorated, cream colored walls. Kid was sitting in front of him, his non-monocle’d eye trained on Saguru’s face. The sunlight was spilling in from a small window too high to see out of. Kid’s white suit was wrinkled as though he’d sat in it all night. Saguru looked around as much as he could without moving his pounding head. The chair Kid was sitting in was white, with a square back and no apparent design. Saguru was in a narrow bed with gray sheets, and the corner of the bedframe he could easily see appeared similarly square and white and plain.

Kid’s visible eye was still focused on Saguru’s face, and Saguru seemed to meet his gaze every time he glanced in Kid’s direction. Kid’s trademark smirk was on his face, but it sat oddly. For one thing, the skin around Kid’s eye was not crinkled in amusement, and his jaw seemed stiffer than usual.

“So, Tantei-san,” Kid finally mused as Saguru caught his eye for the fifth time. “You’re finally awake.”

“I…” Saguru started. He had too many questions spinning around in his head. What had happened after he was hit? How did Kid find him in the other building? Where was he now? Why did Kid – presumably – remove him from the scene to wherever this is? How long had he been out? Had anyone else noticed his absence? What was Kid thinking? He tried to ask all these questions at once, but what actually came out of his mouth was “What… Where..?”

“You’re somewhere safe, Tantei-san.” Kid assured him immediately. “What do you remember?”

“The heist,” Saguru answers immediately. He feels like he normally wouldn’t be so willing to answer, but he can’t remember why right now. Kid nods slightly, makes an encouraging sound, and Saguru elaborates without hesitation. “I was in the other building. There were snipers and I was trying to investigate. They found me and hit my head?” Kid sat up a little straighter at Saguru’s uncertainty, still giving him an inscrutable look.

“What else, Tantei-san?” Kid prompted.

“You… found us,” Saguru guessed, trying to force himself to remember the memory any more clearly. “Them and me. Tied them up, gassed them, right?”

Kid nodded slightly. “What else?”

Saguru frowns, focusing hard on the previous night. His brain obligingly flashes half a memory of staggering along with someone’s shoulder digging into his armpit, and a gentle warmth under his arm that he extrapolates must be that someone’s neck and other shoulder. But the memory is there and gone, and he doesn’t feel like there’s enough of it there to put into words. He’s not even sure if he was staggering along a hallway or a road or down a flight of stairs, or if he made the memory up altogether.

Kid’s eye narrows as the silence stretches on and Saguru isn’t sure why he’s so certain that Kid is feeling concern instead of suspicion. “What should I remember?” Saguru asked, in lieu of admitting he didn’t remember anything more about the previous night – well, he hoped it was just the previous night and he hadn’t lost a day or more.

Kid didn’t seem satisfied with that answer, but he also didn’t seem surprised. “So are you saying you don’t remember insisting, in front of armed, semi-conscious criminals that I’m your soulmate?” Kid asked drily, shifting to fold his arms in a poor imitation of nonchalance.

Saguru froze as he realized the implications of having done so, and of Kid phrasing it that way. “Did I really?” he asked tentatively. Even from the brief snippet of conversation he’d managed to overhear, it was clear the snipers’ main goal was to kill Kid. Implying that he was spiritually connected to the thief, or emotionally important to him was _dangerous_.

“Repeatedly,” Kid answered, and the disapproving frown was obvious in his voice, though his face was still stubbornly set in a meaningless smirk that seemed to mask all other emotions. He paused for a moment, and Saguru felt a confusing surge of emotions. Naturally he was hopeful about the fact that Kid might finally acknowledge him. But he was also terrified at the idea of dangerous criminals targeting him to get to Kid, if they assumed Kid felt the same way. And there were a few more strong emotions mixed in, but Saguru wasn’t taking the time to untangle them all and identify them.

“… _Are_ we soulmates?” Saguru couldn’t help but ask.

Kid let out a long breath, visible eye still searching Saguru's face for something. "Not to alarm you, Tantei-san," Kid said slowly, "but this is the fourth time we've had this conversation."

Saguru almost laughed him off but something about Kid's utterly serious demeanor sent a chill down his spine instead.

"And for the record," Kid said, with hardly a pause for Saguru to process the comment, "Even if I thought we were soulmates, what would I gain from admitting it?"

That sounded entirely too like Kuroba’s frequent ‘ _if_ I were Kid…’ denials for Saguru to be deterred but he ignored the question momentarily and asked his own. "The fourth? Are you sure?" He didn't remember much after being hit over the head, and if he was honest with himself, even that was interpolation rather than memory. If he wasn't storing memories properly, that was _not_ good for his detective abilities, or for the rest of his life.

Kid nodded. "I think you've got a concussion. We've had this conversation each time I woke you to make sure it wasn't worse than a concussion. You're more coherent now, and it's the first time you woke on your own so maybe we won’t have this conversation a _fifth_ time."

Now that Kid mentioned it, Saguru did remember being irritable at being woken up with no other details surrounding it, but the memories were so utterly without context that he hadn’t realized they were from the past day.

“I came to Japan to _find_ you, not arrest you,” Saguru protested, not having much to add to a conversation about his own, largely forgotten, concussion symptoms. “You clearly do your best not to hurt people while you steal, and you inevitably return things. I may not understand why you’ve chosen this path, but I would respect your trust enough not to turn you in.”

“I think I’m a bit old for you though,” Kid pointed out, with a hint of his usual humor. “I was already doing heists when you were a toddler. Why are you so convinced I’m your soulmate?”

Saguru hesitated for a moment. He’d explained his theory to Kuroba on multiple occasions, but since Kid sounded like he was willing to listen, maybe he ought to present the theory a little more nicely than he usually did. “Well, there was that eight-year hiatus. Based on what I’ve read from the old files and new ones, I’d put solid money on the idea that you’re a new Kid. You took at least four heists this time to establish your new style but it’s not the same. Something caused the first Kid to stop holding heists eight years ago, and now you’ve stepped up in his place.” That left out his usual observation that Kuroba’s father had died shortly after the last heist from the original Kid.

Kid didn’t respond immediately, but his posture still seemed to be inviting comment. “And my soulmark has been changing among different natural hair colors, and back to its original color the same day. It has been too consistently lined-up with your heists, and no other times, to be coincidence,” Saguru admitted. “Since before I came to Japan, I noticed it.” He wasn’t sure that sentence quite made sense, but he couldn’t quite focus enough to correct it.

“And your suspicions about your classmate?” Kid prompted, which, yes, Saguru was still considering Kuroba, and was still reasonably sure Kuroba was Kid, but he wasn’t convinced the conversation had led there. In fact, that was at least the second time Kid had reacted to something other than what Saguru had said.

“Yes, well. I… _What?_ ” Saguru finally managed. There were a few possible responses to Kid’s prompting, but which was most relevant really depended on Kid’s motivation in asking. There remained a chance, however slight, that Kid was bluffing about Saguru’s memory loss, which would make his knowledge of Saguru’s suspicions proof that he was definitely Kuroba, or at the very least one of their other classmates, though none of the others had Kuroba’s skill or history. But Kuroba was smart enough not to risk that. So if Kid was Kuroba he was likely asking to defend his identity, and if he wasn’t, he might be scoping out how strongly Saguru felt about romantic rivals? The question Kid was asking wasn’t exactly clear either. What was the best response?

“We got to a certain point in a previous iteration of this conversation where you started calling me by a classmate’s name.” Kid said, a little too casually. “You were as convinced that he was me as you were that you and I were soulmates. Why don’t you just approach your classmate for a romantic relationship? What do you gain from pursuing me other than the ability to turn me in?”

 “You’re more fun,” Saguru blurted honestly before he remembered that he ought to be answering that question with careful tact. “What I mean is…” Kuroba’s pranks would be more fun if Saguru had solid proof that he knew where to draw the line, the way Kid seems to. Nakamori clearly thinks Kuroba has a heart of gold despite everything and Saguru wishes he could see it because she seems to have remarkably mature judgment when it comes to everyone else. Kid provided the best challenge and adrenaline rush, for those chasing him in person, that Saguru had ever experienced without confronting a serial killer at the end of the rush. Kuroba had the softest-looking lips Saguru had ever seen on a guy but Kid’s looked comparably never-dry. Was it only wishful thinking that had Saguru combining the two in his mind? Had he misunderstood the evidence from his analysis of Kid’s hair after that first encounter? Actually, that first comparison was balanced enough to share. “My classmate is a magician and a prankster, and by the way he carries himself at school I can’t tell if he actually knows when he’s gone too far. You, despite causing larger disruptions to people’s lives, clearly stop short of harming people beyond embarrassment. Knowing you know where the line is makes it less of a risk to play along. More fun,” Saguru summarized, realizing belatedly that he’d echoed his original statement. That was better anyway, it made the whole thing sound justified and thought out.

“You’re saying that if I _am_ your classmate, you like him better than you already do and if I’m _not_ , he’s not a threat to me romantically?” Kid paraphrased, and while Saguru was definitely thinking something very similar to those words, he was surprised Kid guessed them so accurately.

“Did I say that before?” Saguru asked. Kid nodded, a glimmer of amusement in his eye. “So why are you asking again?”

Kid shrugged, all emotion hidden behind his usual glib façade. “If you’re faking your memory loss you can’t pretend we never had this conversation. I’ve been bringing up all the interesting bits. It _is_ rather flattering that you’re so obsessed with me, Tantei-san.” His voice was teasing, but light enough that Saguru didn’t feel condescended to.

“So you’re just going to feed me interesting details that I don’t even have to work for?” Saguru teased back. “How boring.”

That seemed to startle a laugh out of Kid. It sounded genuine. “So you don’t want me to tell you anything interesting, huh?” Kid asked, lips stayed quirked in an amused smile that seemed less of a mask than his usual smirk. “I shouldn’t even tell you that we kissed by the end of our last conversation?”

Saguru’s eyes were suddenly unable to look anywhere but at Kid’s very soft, very kissable lips. “Did we really?” he asked in surprise. He very much regretted not remembering that, nor how they’d gotten there.

“No we did not,” Kid answered seriously, the laughing, teasing tone dropping away for that short phrase, and returning for the next, “But it would have been interesting, wouldn’t it?”

Saguru’s stomach did a funny little flip at that. Kid was teasing him. The punchline didn’t seem to be ‘ha! I would never kiss _you_ ’ but he was still somehow the butt of the joke. He didn’t know why he’d gotten his hopes up at a single, obviously teasing, throwaway remark.

“What else that’s both interesting and _true_ did you want to ‘bring up again’ from our previous conversations?” Saguru asked tiredly, all teasing gone. It came out a little sharper than he intended, but he couldn’t bring himself to correct that impression. Nor could he bring himself to look back at Kid’s face. He stared instead at the V where Kid’s red tie disappeared under his waistcoat.

Fortunately, Kid seemed to read his change of mood perfectly. “You asked me how I found you,” he said, tone gentle, and with an amused lilt but not the teasing edge. Saguru raised a skeptical eyebrow in his direction. He was wondering that, but compared to everything else it seemed an unimportant question. “Do you still want to know the answer?” Kid prompted. Saguru just shrugged. Of course he wanted to know, but he was rather tired of Kid leading him by the nose through the ‘interesting bits’ of past conversations. Plus, his head was throbbing and now that he wasn’t interested enough in the conversation to ignore the pain, he just wanted to be left alone to nurse his headache in quiet. And maybe he wanted to sulk a bit, but he wasn’t likely to admit that, even to himself

“You bled into your hair. After they hit you” Kid said simply, as though that explained everything. Saguru’s eyes snapped back up to Kid’s face, searching for any hint he was still teasing. Was he really admitting…?

Kid met Saguru’s questioning gaze without wavering. Then he glanced down at his left arm. Saguru followed his gaze and watched with interest as Kid shoved his white sleeve up to his elbow, then peeled the skin-tone spandex sleeve off over his hand. Sure enough, Saguru’s bright hair color stood out on Kid’s wrist, the yellow-brown unflattering against Kid’s pale skin. Sure enough, there was an unusual red-brown, the color of dried blood, just off-center in Kid’s soul mark, a vertical stripe from approximately ¾ of the way “up” Kid’s soul mark, towards the wrist, and winding organically “down” towards his elbow. The blood color was paler at the bottom for some reason.

Though Saguru was excited at the idea of having confirmed he’d met his soulmate, his brain immediately started cataloguing the answers to all of the questions he’d been unable to answer in secondary  school. The marks seemed to accurately represent when your soulmate’s hair was different colors throughout. He self-consciously ran a hand through the hair at the base of his neck, roughly below where his headache seemed to be centered, and found a patch of hair that was slightly stiff on the right side, though his neck seemed to have been wiped clean. The injury was on the right side of his head, and the blood-color on Kid’s wrist was on the far side from his thumb, so if Kid held up his wrist and looked at the back of Saguru’s head, they probably looked the same from that angle. Interesting.

Kid seemed to misunderstand Saguru’s intrigued silence as doubt, because he made a pack of wet wipes appear with a magician’s flourish, and pulled one out to use. The scent of rubbing alcohol made Saguru’s nose prickle as Kid cleaned the patch on his arm, demonstrating that he hadn’t faked the effect with makeup.

“We _are_ soulmates, but if you use that against me to turn me in, I _will_ implicate you in return,” Kid threatened, though his voice was warm, still amused.

“Of course,” Saguru agreed easily. He’d known since he first acknowledged that Kid was his soulmate that he could be targeted for their connection. He wasn’t surprised that Kid would try to hold it over his head. “I’m still going to chase you though.”

Kid laughed again, a light and airy sound that brought Saguru’s heart up with it. “I would expect nothing less from you, Tantei-san. Besides. You might get the wrong sort of attention if you suddenly stopped coming to heists.”

Saguru snorted. That was too true.

“So, are you feeling up to going home?” Kid asked abruptly.

Saguru wasn’t sure immediately, but he let Kid help him out of the bed. A wave of vertigo made him cling to Kid for balance, but Kid seemed prepared, and held him upright. Fortunately, the vertigo passed after only a moment. Saguru was still in his clothes from the night before, and when he was stable enough to stand without leaning on Kid he checked his pockets. Nothing was missing, though his phone was upside down in his pocket. He unlocked it and found an outgoing text that he didn’t remember writing, and suspected he hadn’t actually written, informing Baaya that he was working on a school project with a classmate after the heist, and might not be home for a while. She had responded, unhappily, about how he should have come home instead and it was too late to be out, but she hadn’t demanded his location and didn’t seem frantic, so he could probably go home and expect nothing worse than a scolding. Not that he felt up to fielding a scolding right now, but at least it wasn’t worse.

Kid led Saguru first to a small bathroom. He produced a matching black washcloth and towel and shoved them into Saguru’s hands, nudging him towards the door. “You may want to wash up before you go anywhere.”

Saguru obediently took the bundle and entered the bathroom, locking the door behind him. He pushed away the thought that Danny wouldn’t have given him the chance to shower alone after such an injury, but Kid could easily pick the lock if he needed to and Saguru was honestly glad for the privacy and the chance to think over his circumstances. The bathroom was lacking any windows, and the walls were painted the same generic cream color as the bedroom he’d woken up in. While he was showering, Saguru tried to puzzle out his feelings on Kid’s revelation that they were, in fact, soulmates. It wasn’t as conclusive as he’d hoped. Unless Kid also admitted to his civilian identity, Saguru had to pretend that he still didn’t know who his soulmate was, so he would have to hide any excitement he still felt. And he would have to prepare for a secret relationship, if he had one at all, with his soulmate. The only real improvement from when he’d only suspected who his soulmate was, was that he no longer had to guess. Except. Well. He still had to guess about Kuroba.

When Saguru emerged from the bathroom, fully clothed again and with the towel around his shoulders to prevent his still-dripping hair from making a mess, Kid immediately instructed him to actually dry his hair. “It won’t be the first time that towel has had blood on it. Don’t worry about it.” Saguru shrugged and followed instructions, gently squeezing the water out of his hair and patting gently around the lump on his head where he’d been hit.

Satisfied, Kid made the towel disappear and led Saguru down a flight of stairs, and into a common area that seemed to have been hurriedly cleaned of all identifiable clutter. The curtains were drawn, but they were thin enough that afternoon sunlight still lit the room. A man in a flat mask with a cartoonishly grinning face turned from dusting off a table that showed signs of being recently cleared. After a moment or two of silence, which must have involved Kid making a questioning face that Saguru couldn’t see from directly behind him, the man spoke. “I told you, young master, that if you brought him here we could no longer use it as a safe house.” His voice sounded forced below its normal range, as though to disguise it. If that was to prevent Saguru from recognizing his voice it worked – it didn’t sound familiar at all, but if the masked man was trying to sound natural, he had failed altogether.

Kid shrugged as nonchalantly at that as he had at any of Saguru’s questions. “I know. But Tantei-san won’t turn us in, will he?” he asked with an edge as he turned to see Saguru’s reaction.

“You can call me by name, and no I won’t.”

“See, Hakuba won’t turn us in.” Kid repeated, jumping immediately to the familiarity of addressing Saguru with no suffix, and grinning back at the man. The masked man said nothing more, seemed to meet Kid’s eyes for another two seconds, and then took his cleaning supplies to the next room. Kid turned back to Saguru, unperturbed as though this were an everyday occurrence. “May I have the pleasure of walking you home, my soulmate?” Kid asked with a grand, sweeping bow. Saguru watched with some amusement until Kid caught his hand on the way back up and kissed his knuckles like one would a princess.

Saguru felt the warmth of a blush creeping across his cheeks. “I suppose you may,” he answered, and Kid’s regular grin grew even wider.

Kid gently released Saguru’s hand and took a step back. Then he spun, flourishing what must have been a tablecloth, which hid him from view. When he reappeared, Kid was wearing a generic dark gray running suit and a plain blue ball cap pulled low over his face. The cap was angled in such a way that the shadows the brim cast obscured more of his face than his monocle did.

“Shall we?” Kid asked, nodding towards the front door. Saguru tentatively led the way and Kid kept pace with him to the door.

Saguru started putting his shoes on, preparing to go out, but realized abruptly, “Hold on. What happened to the snipers?”

“After you were out and safe, I led the police to that building,” Kid answered easily. “They found the snipers and arrested them. Easy enough when they’re unconscious.”

“Is it going to be a problem that they know we’re soulmates?”

“They know _you think_ we’re soulmates,” Kid corrected. “And the police are assuming the snipers know _of_ you from the news and are trying to get you in trouble. They just described you as ‘that blond kid’. Most of the officers didn’t realize you were at the heist at all.”

Saguru blinked. Kid had implied that he’d spent most of the night keeping an eye on Saguru and his concussion, and that the snipers were still unconscious when they were arrested, but this information must have been during the initial interviews after they woke up. “And how do you know that?”

“Oh, you know,” Kid did not glance back over his shoulder, but he quit meeting Saguru’s gaze and his eyes were suddenly flickering towards the corner of the room farthest from the doorway the masked man had left through. Kid had the same tells as Kuroba did. “I have my sources.”

Kid’s accomplice had snooped on the police to get that information. Considering that gained Saguru the knowledge that he wasn’t suddenly a suspect, he couldn’t bring himself to mind, particularly.

They stepped out the door together, pausing only long enough for Kid to lock the door behind them. From there, Kid took the lead, though only by a half step, and easily led Saguru out of the generic, middle-class neighborhood, to the main road.

Once Saguru recognized his surroundings enough to find the nearest train station, Kid let Saguru step into the lead again, but continued to match his pace, and even followed Saguru onto the train. There wasn’t much discussion between them as they walked along. Saguru wasn’t sure what he could ask Kid in public, and Kid wasn’t starting conversations for some reason of his own.

Finally, they walked up to the gate to the Hakuba property. Saguru glanced over at Kid, wondering how far Kid was planning to follow him. Just this far, apparently. Kid stopped walking and grabbed one of Saguru’s hands. Saguru took that as a cue to fully turn and face him, and when he did, Kid grabbed his other hand with a grin that Saguru didn’t quite know how to interpret.

Kid tugged gently on his hands, and Saguru leaned in, not knowing quite what he expected.

Kid went up on his toes and pressed a gentle kiss to Saguru’s forehead. Saguru was ready to bask in the moment forever, but all too soon, Kid pulled away, wearing a softer grin than his usual expression. Saguru was sure he had his own version of a lovesick grin on his face, but he couldn’t bring himself to hide it.

Suddenly, Kid whipped off his hat, and smirked at Saguru, revealing his mask-free face, complete with bags under his eyes from lack of sleep.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Hakuba,” Kuroba said, before vanishing into another puff of smoke.

Saguru found he wasn’t even upset at Kuroba’s sudden disappearance. It was very Kid-like to make a sudden, surprising reveal, and then vanish. Maybe it was just a typical magician’s habit. Hard to tell, since he really only knew one magician. He laughed to himself as he punched in the combination to open the gate, sure Kuroba hadn’t gone far. “Looking forward to it, Kuroba,” he muttered, just loud enough to be overheard if anyone was in the area. And since no acorns pelted him from the oak tree with thick enough foliage for Kid to have hidden in, he knew he had chosen the right form of address

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Saguru’s concussion symptoms borrowed heavily from @scriptmedic’s own experiences and recommendations on treatment for concussed patients, links: [[x]](https://scriptmedic.tumblr.com/post/167464942430/injury-profiles-concussion) [[x]](https://scriptmedic.tumblr.com/post/153948260610/story-time-aunt-scriptys-concussion) [[x]](https://scriptmedic.tumblr.com/post/163956166158/can-a-character-with-a-concussion-be-given-a) – it’s approximately 15 hours later, and Kaito woke Saguru every 4 hours per the recommendation
> 
> ...Well that was it. Hopefully a conclusive enough ending. It's now 4:30 in the morning and I officially have no idea whether anyone is in character or if I've missed a major typo or anything else. It's been fun working on this story but for now I shall go to bed. Let me know what you thought. :)


End file.
